Wasn't trying to be over bearing Bones. If you feel a C is appropriate and that is what he has done you are a tougher grader than i am. I gave him a B is all. Wish i was giving him an A but he has made some bonehead moves or at least it appears he has? 2016 was tough no question.
A lot of people base their grades off the teams performance, but I think the teams performance under Olshey should be an average baseline when you have a guy like Damian Lillard, who I think the Blazers were set to draft before Neil became GM.
We should be realistic about Dame though. He’s been very good, but he hasnt been better than, Lebron, Kawhi, KD, Steph, Harden, heck theres even a few others who statistically have been better, like AD.
This talk about how it's average to make the playoffs and that the team has a history of being good completely ignores the state of the franchise prior to that. When Olshey took over the Blazers: They hadn't been out of the first round in 13 seasons. They had only made the playoffs 3 out of the previous 9 seasons. The previous season featured a mutiny by the players and was a complete embarrassment. This franchise was in pretty poor shape. Since Olshey took over: 6 out of 7 years in the playoffs. Out of the 1st round 3 out of 7 years. That's not average in today's NBA.
But hes a leader who sets the culture and those factors are underrated. Being competitive in the 2nd round once in 7 years with a guy that good isnt much of an accomplishment.
Hardens been about the same, AD hasnt even has close to that much success. Theres a bunch of examples of players who have been arguably just as good or at least in that same “tier”, as Dame who havent had much more success than Dame. I mean I love what Dame has done here, but I mean, he’s been a couple years a top 5ish guy. A few of those years has gone against teams with 2 top 5 guys. I “understand”, what you’re saying. I think it’ll suck if this year was the pinnacle of Dame’s career for team success, lets remember though Dame himself has been young, he’s really just now in his prime.
And those GMs do terrible D or F level work. And if the team gets back to the WCF and/pr if Neil makes a good deal at the deadline his grade will rise.
Not picking through minutia, but here are some highlights. Feel free to copy and past your own additions. Accomplishments: Drafted: Dame, CJ, Connaughton, Crabbe, Collins, Simons, Trent (some of these I consider successes because he found NBA talent so late in the draft) Traded: Plumlee for Nurkic+Pick (that became Collins), Hark/Meyers for Whiteside, Turner for Bazemore FA Signed: Aminu, Harkless, Hood, Kanter Let Walk: Batum, Matthews Big Contracts: Dame, CJ, Nurk Failures: Drafted: Leonard (I'm not 100% I even consider this a failure, given it was 11th pick and he is still in the league for legit reasons) Traded: Barton for Afflalo FA Signed: Turner Let Walk: Aldridge, Aminu (he's a talented guy. I was ready to see him go, but he was still a valuable piece.) Big Contracts: Leonard, Harkless, Turner Overall he inherited a team that was kind of directionless and floundering with one star player and a decent cast of role players. Adding Dame actually gave us a small chance at championship contention, and when shit hit the fan he executed a full rebuild that had us back in the Western Conference Finals in less than 5 years without dipping into the lottery once. The lowest point was letting Aldridge walk without compensation. You can chalk that up to LMA weirdness, but when that much talent leaves uncompensated, the GM has to take some blame. Second lowest were the stupid trifecta of contracts in 2016. His best accomplishments were drafting Dame/CJ (and the jury is out but we may count Simons on that list soon) and locking them up throughout their peak years, and swindling Denver for Nurkic + Pick (that became Collins). When you look at everything that happened from 2001 to 2012, from the Jail Blazers and Oden Saga and Roy Knee and everything else, it's easy to see now how badly the post-Aldridge era could've gone. It definitely helps that Lillard has led the team through the transition, but hey, our GM is the reason we have Lillard. So if you want to point the finger at Dame, you still have to point the finger at Olshey. I guess everybody is entitled to their opinions, but given how few free agents Portland traditionally attracts and how we haven't had lots of lottery tanking, I personally don't see how you give him anything less than an A. I kind of waffled on A-, but in the end I think LMA fucks over any other GM in the same situation (see Kwame for example), and everybody was handing out ludicrous deals in 2016. So those failures sucked, but they weren't uniquely sucky. I probably would've graded him much worse after the Pelicans sweep, and I may grade him differently next year. So there's some recency bias I'll admit to. But jeez, how good do you expect us to be? I feel like some people will only grade him an A if Portland wins a championship. That's too high of a bar, IMO. (Especially given the Warriors Dynasty.) I want a competitive, playoff team with a bright future, and that's what I've got. So I'm comfortable with an A.
I can understand how people could give him a B. I don't agree, but OK. But an A? c'mon man * his first two seasons, he assembled the two worst benches in Blazer history including his 1st which was historically bad gauged against league history * over his first 4 seasons, he had a cumulative cap-space of somewhere in the neighborhood of 55-65 million...and what he added to the roster was Dorrell Wright, Joel Freeland, Aminu, Ed Davis, Evan Turner, and Festus Ezeli. Even mitigating by Portland's historical issue attracting free agents, that's a terrible performance. * he made max offers to Roy Hibbert, Enes Kanter, Greg Monroe, and Chandler Parsons. Any one of them would have been as bad, or worse than Turner's deal. He also made a max-MLE offer to Spenser Hawes...yuck * he overpaid for Afflalo and undersold Batum * in 2016, he obligated Portland to 340M in contracts to 6 players and not an all-star among them. One never played a minute, and 3 others were well below average as players; and if you don't like Harkless, then it was 5 'bad' contracts he does draft pretty well, and he's very good at trading next-to-nothing for players other teams are wanting to dump. But considering that so much of the team success is due to Lillard, a player Portland had targeted before Olshey arrived, and a player taken with a pick an interim GM acquired, the list of bad decisions has to knock him below any A grade
Well that is pretty much the point. Not just making the playoffs but getting past the first round and doing it while pretty much rebuilding the team. This summer was a retool. They kept major pieces like Lillard,CJ and Nurk and tooled up around them but the summer of 2015 was pretty much a rebuild around Lillard. Still kept the team competitive. Many teams around the league have done far worse with much better draft picks available for multiple years running. Losing LaMarcus Aldridge the way he left was a tough hurdle.
Yeah, I feel you on all those max offers. I was pondering that when I wrote what I did, because if he'd had his way it would've been an utter disaster. But just like I don't know all the good deals he was 80% close to getting, I don't know all the bad ones either. I find it's more productive to look at actual results rather than what might have been. But yeah, he would've been fired long ago if he'd actually got all the guys that we know he went after. lol. Luckily, all those max offers were long ago. He seems to have learned on the job quite a bit since 2016. Like I said, I have a ton of recency bias in my own evaluation. I'm a "what have you done for me lately" kind of guy. And I like where the team is now.
summer of 2016 was his rock bottom IMO, and maybe at least part of that was PA telling him to sign/keep all those guys many of us view as bad signings - we just don't know, however since then he has done an "A" job IMO and what keeps him at a B for me is that summer of 16. I wanted him gone after that for a while, he has done a very good job the past 1-2 yrs working form a difficult position.
Some things that could improve my grade: If Collins has the best possible breakout this year - B- If Simons has the best possible breakout this year - B- If both have the best possible breakout this year - B/B+ If Olshey gets good value on a trade for Blake Griffin - B+ If Olshey gets good value on a trade for Otto Porter Jr. - B If Olshey gets good value on a trade for Robert Covington - B-/C+ What he did since drafting Dame all the way through 2016 was a D-level performance. Positives: He got good value on the 10th pick (CJ) Traded for an average starting C (Lopez) Signed some average role players (Aminu, Davis) Negatives: Couldn't build a bench Didn't get value back for Aldridge Traded Batum for a minimal package Signed horrible contracts in 2016 (this is the biggest thing, it held us back for years) Since then? It's been a B, maybe a B+. C.
I just look at the year he started until now and how has the team performed and progressed. A C-level GM doesn’t accomplish this. It’s been above average since he’s been here. So his grade is above average. It’s pretty straight forward
Give it a rest already as the forum clearly disagrees with you by a very significant margin and nothing else you post is going to change anybody's mind just as you won;t change your mind. Why can't you just let others have an opinion and not continually argue the same point over and over again?
